The Unsinkable Regina King Begins Her Second Act

Regina King is holding up two pairs of earrings and polling the five-person crew holed up in a windowless room at L.A.'s Roosevelt Hotel, where she's getting ready for her ELLE.com photoshoot. Her toned arms are on full display in the flowing Grecian-style Ella Moss gown she's chosen for the shoot (another crowdsourced decision). She fixes her gaze on me, the one who works at ELLE and presumably knows something about fashion and accessories. "Hoops," I say, probably a little too quickly and decisively. She heeds my advice anyway.

Despite the authority she commands on-screen, King isn't afraid to ask for advice—even from perfect strangers. This much becomes clear as we talk about her prolific, 30-plus-year career.

Abby Ross

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The Los Angeles native began working as an actress in 1985 at the age of 13, when she took on the role of Brenda Jenkins on the NBC sitcom 227. Since then, she's racked up a staggering 46 acting credits. Her highlight reel includes leading roles in John Singleton's now-classic '90s films Boyz n the Hood and Poetic Justice, a memorable turn in the smash hit Jerry Maguire, a critically acclaimed performance as backup singer Margie Hendricks in Ray, and, more recently, a return to TV with lauded performances in Southland, The Leftovers, and American Crime, which is currently in its second season.

"She holds it all together. Without her you see the cracks."

Acting is the only job King has ever known and, as her steady, decades-long career attests, she's really, really good at it. Her performances are nuanced and subtle. She doesn't need to be the star, and often she isn't. But she's the kind of actor who elevates every project she touches. Christopher Chulack, her executive producer on Southland, describes her, however unsexily, as the grout. "She holds it all together," he says. "Without her you see the cracks." She is, he says, "the consummate professional." And while King has been nominated for several awards over the years, last year she took home the big one: An Emmy for outstanding supporting actress for her portrayal of Aliyah Shadeed on American Crime.

Abby Ross

Over the last couple of years, King has quietly amassed a few other IMDb credits for her work behind the camera. She's directed episodes of Southland, Being Mary Jane, and, most recently, Scandal. These credits are notable given how stacked the cards are against women and people of color in Hollywood, particularly behind the camera. A study released this week by the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism looked at more than 400 movies and scripted television series and found that 84.8 percent of directors were male. Of those directors evaluated (there were 407), 87 percent were white. More to the point, just two (two!) of the directors in film and television/digital series looked at—Amma Asante (Belle) and Ava DuVernay (Selma)—were black women.

So how did King start directing? She asked someone for advice.

"Once I finally felt confident enough to say to someone like [director, producer, and DGA president] Paris Barclay and [producer] Christopher Chulack that I want to direct, and I'm going to direct, and whatever you can share, I want to learn and I'm going to be the student...it just started from there," King says. "I was not trying to get the opportunity based on my name."

Like any focused newcomer, King just put her head down and did the work. In 2010, when R&B artist Jaheim approached her to be in a music video (they were both guest stars on The Mo'Nique Show), she saw an opportunity. After initially turning down Jaheim ("I was like, 'No, I don't do videos'"), she called him back and said, "I'll do your video if I can direct it." King brought that video, which has since been viewed nearly 8 million times on YouTube, to a meeting with Barclay, who then pointed her in the direction of the Disney ABC Directing Program, a two-year program within Disney/ABC (American Crime is on ABC) that trains directors and executives to direct episodic television. King was accepted, and it was through the Directing Program, she says, that she "got to Shonda."

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In some ways, getting to Shonda Rhimes was always the goal.

"I thought maybe if I rub Shonda, some of that will rub off!"

"Sure, for obvious reasons, you know, she's a woman who looks like me," King says. "But she's just an amazing writer and I wanted to be a part of that. You know how you rub the stump before you go out on the Apollo? I thought maybe if I rub Shonda, some of that will rub off!"

King also points to Debbie Allen as a role model. "I discovered Debbie Allen had been directing probably long after she'd already been directing, but watching her on A Different World...that was my first realization that women direct," King says. "As sad as it is that I didn't really see that until my early twenties, that's the reality. Not even that black women direct, but that actresses direct! She represented actresses directing and that just made it real."

With nine directing credits under her belt and more surely to follow, King says directing is "even better than I imagined...you're learning so much all the time."

King, now 45, is able to devote herself fully to what she calls her "new chapter" in part because her son, Ian, is now away at college. "I didn't take roles that were outside of L.A. until just recently," she says. "With my son in college, it just opened things up a lot. So, I'm still a mom, but I'm doing more things now that Regina wants to do. The balance is different." As Anne-Marie Slaughter pointed out in her 2012 conversation-shifting essay "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," moms in their late forties with empty nests "can expect to immerse themselves completely in their careers...with plenty of time still to rise to the top in their late fifties and early sixties." And, among the many things that King wants to do with her newfound balance, finding a man, refreshingly, is not high on the priority list. "To be honest, I'm enjoying just me," she says. "Would I like to have companionship? Absolutely. But right now, at the expense of doing me, not really."

Right now, King is laser-focused. "I'm excited that my directing career is taking off now," she says as the final touches are applied to her hair and makeup. "It ended up being perfect timing." She also concedes that fear was partially responsible for delaying her second act: "Sometimes we hold ourselves back from things, but we don't really know why we're holding ourselves back from them," she says. "Maybe because you don't see a lot of examples of [other black women directing], you feel like it won't be received well."

And that's another thing, of course: the ongoing and necessary national conversation surrounding Hollywood's systemic whitewashing, the upcoming Oscars (#sowhite), and another awards season that promises to look much the same. "I haven't really said anything publicly or on social media about the Oscars," King says, "because I feel like it—by all means, I do feel like there are some changes that need to be made—but I feel like a lot of those changes need to start even before it got to the Academy ... The conversation is bigger than just the Academy. The conversation is before the Academy. I've been really trying to not make a stance or say something in 143 characters because it's impossible. It's too complicated to just leave it to a Facebook page post." She pauses and smiles. "Anyway, I'm not even on Facebook."

Besides, she's already part of the conversation, without saying a word. "There have to be more projects where [there are] directors who are not white and male...and then comes the press rollout for the Oscar campaign."